SEYYARE – Anatolian Women’s Choir ・ Pop-Kultur Festival 2026

August 24–30, 2026 | silent green Kulturquartier, Festsaal Kreuzberg, Kulturbrauerei, Pierre Boulez Saal, and more 

Live concerts, experimental music formats, talks, and more. You can look forward to international and local artists, world premieres, and music in all its forms—from large stages to intimate club shows.

SEYYARE – Anatolian Women’s Choir: “Now, everybody is on the Road” The Anatolian women’s choir SEYYARE was formed out of a moment of collective urgency: the spontaneous singing during the funeral of Filiz Taşkın, a pioneer of migrant resistance who passed away on January 17, 2024. From this gesture of remembrance emerged a choir that will continue to perform through June 2026 under the patronage of Shermin Langhoff (Maxim Gorki Theater) and the musical direction of Sema Moritz. The singers of the SEYYARE Choir, shaped by migration and exile, have compiled a multifaceted repertoire in over ten languages: centuries-old folk songs from Anatolia, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the broader Southwest Asian region. Moritz—singer, storyteller, and musical archaeologist—has been navigating the fault lines of memory, sound, and artistic freedom between Berlin and Istanbul for over four decades. Her work interprets music as a social space: for encounter, self-empowerment, and a collective memory that refuses to be silenced. Her projects bring together Jewish, Sephardic, Armenian, and Turkish sound archives and texts—ranging from tangos, foxtrots, and waltzes from Istanbul in the 1920s through the 1940s to songs of resistance. In doing so, she follows in the tradition of great Turkish stage singers—a history of chanson that remains underrepresented in the German context. With SEYYARE, a cross-generational, migrant women’s choir has emerged that understands the voice as a political practice. Most recently, the choir left its mark on Ersan Mondtag’s production of “Das Rote Haus” at the Maxim Gorki Theater. As part of a collaboration with the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, SEYYARE will perform at the Pop-Kultur Festival: During a residency as part of the Kyiv Biennale, the choir will meet regularly for joint rehearsals at the KW, which will be open to the public on July 16. This will be followed by a concert as part of the regular festival program—polyphonic, defiant, and contemporary.